Reflecting on All That I Know

     Some few years ago my wife and I began taking day trips around New England.  We decided to travel to destinations within a three hour car ride.  I find driving relaxing, and, well she enjoys the company, me.  One of our go to spots is Rockport Massachusetts. 

It is a small artistic seaport community about an hour north of Boston located on a jutting out bit of land that creates a picturesque harbor for both pleasure craft and working lobster boats.  There is also a fleet of rental kyaks that shove off from a dock just east of Rockport’s most famous icons, Motif #1, a deep red boathouse that has been the subject of artist’s and photographer’s work for years beyond memory.

     I chose not to paint it.  I looked south to the mixed fleet of vessels that filled the harbor and the old colonial buildings in the distance behind them.  What caught my fullest

attention were the reflections and the movement of the waters surface as it moved and shaped those reflections.  Color upon color shimmered and danced to music I could not hear.  But I felt it, and out came my pencil.  A few quickly drawn lines and some scribbles, a few short notes and a trip to the studio begat the drawing.  This was the foundation.

Reflecting

      There is not an attempt to create a portrait of these reflections or their source.  This was an effort to dig deep into my knowledge, limited or not, of color.  I stressed high intensity and unnatural color, some might say crayon box of colors, and fit them together in a way that feels both calm and satisfying.          The reflections act as a metaphor for my understanding of color and how it works.  The motif, Rockport Harbor and the working boat also a metaphor, serve to remind me of the work and beauty of my journey as an artist.

The passionate red of the vessel in the lower right, welcomes a viewer into the story, the vertical lines, telephone posts, radio antenna, play a rhythm to an hypersonic song. 

Reflecting on All That I Know

     The swirls of current and dots of color dance around the reflections and the thoughts as I consider the lessons and advice that led to years of continued searching and discovery.  

     I find comfort in those lessons and in those thoughts as I sit on a weathered old dock, reflecting on all that I know. 

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Morning Light, Wharfside

                        "Red sky in morning, sailor take warning."
  
     I heard that old rhyme so many years ago, it sits with me like a prayer told after confession. 

Morning Light Warf Side

     It’s just a part of me. 

     2/3 of my life have passed since my time in the U.S. Coast Guard, and my memories of that time, while fading, are as much of who I am as the old rhymes and prayers of my boyhood.  We don’t have to think about breathing, it just happens, and time slips aside, revealing times and faces lost behind the mists of priorities, deadlines, and trauma.  Sometimes, I remember an emotion or a sensation, not quite as powerful as a full on emotion.  I embrace my memories as well as those feelings.  They are whispers of my muse, gentle, prodding, sometimes downright inspiring. 
When it happens, I get quiet.  My breathing slows.  My eyes loose focus and I am seeing on another more clear level of awareness.  I get that feeling when I am looking at a masterwork at a museum, a newly discovered painting in a random gallery with a forgotten name, or when I see and image that needs to become one of my paintings.  Morning Light, Wharfside is inspired by just such a moment.

detail

        Walking along a wharf in Provincetown, Ma, I had such a sensation, bringing me back to my nineteenth year on this earth.  I was a seaman on a Coast Guard cutter, the Cape Horn to be specific, 95322 painted in black on her gleaming white hull. 
     
     Yes, I painted those numbers, and the name on her stern as well.  I stood watch many times during my two years serving on her crew.  Daytimes, evenings, late nights and early mornings, and after all those years, I know I am still a bit of a night hawk.  I prefer the night to mornings.  I function better in every way.  In fact I hate mornings.  Back then, as that nineteen year old, and for a few more years, my favorite time of day was sunrise.  Not the sunrise you see when you get out of bed early enough to see it, but the sunrise you see after a night, awake, aware, and active.  That sunrise would link two days together, and fill the new one with hope.  I never felt as though a red sky was necessarily a warning, I loved the mood of the red or really, magenta color.  It filled me with hope for the new day.

detail

     Some thirty-five years later, standing on the shoreline that gave a great view of the wharf in Provincetown, on a hot afternoon, I felt that shift in time, a sidestep into old emotion.  The magenta to red, the first rays of sunshine reflecting from the building, the people waving behind them, and the light flickering along the water surface.  They are all symbolic to me.  As I painted this piece, I felt every bit the older, wiser man I had become, looking back, connecting with the young man discovering hope in the early light, and I realized that his hope was not misplaced.

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Pathways Through Color 1

Mudseason: Kinship

       I started this new year with the news that I have earned my fifth grant from the Fall River Cultural Council, a division of the Massachusetts Cultural Council.  This Years work grows out of last years work.  I created about 50 graphite drawings inspired by my walks in the Freetown Fall River State Forest and the White Mountains of New Hampshire.  Essentially I spent most of the year drawing trees.

Mudseason: Small path

Mudseason: Along the Saco

        I spent the time exploring the value range found during "Mudseason", That early part of spring before the buds and blossoms even begin to wake up.  The ground is soft, sweet smelling, somewhat slippery and filled with a range of color I was not used to, so I chose to avoid color, and stick with my pencils, erasers, I guess, I sort of went acoustic.

Mudseason: Reflecting

        So, back to this new year and new project, Pathways Through Color.  I have brought my palette and brushes back into the equation.  There is a new range of hue and chroma working through.  A new vocabulary.  I am excited as I walk the the color and into the forests.  Now, I need to add, these are meant to be expressive paintings.  They are inspired by actual places, but not intended to be true representations of those places.  They are about color, value and emotion.  

Mudseason: My Tree

Mudseason: The Long Twin Silver Line

            

  

Taunton River Watershed Collection

Evening Breezes

Along the shores of the Taunton River, at the head of Mount Hope Bay, on the Somerset edge of the river, is an amazing natural environment flourishing around a series of man made intrusions. There is a power plant, shut down and discarded like an old shoe box.  The six lanes of Rt 195 splits what was once, in my lifetime, flourishing farm land. Long before that, this was the location of a Native American village.  Above it all, the mighty blue Charles Braga Bridge reaches across the river’s widest expanse, connecting towns to cities and closing the time gap toward old Cape Cod.

Midday Mount Hope Bay

From that location, I began an exploration of the beauty that lies in unexpected places.  The light, unfettered and resilient does not discriminate.  It touches steel and straw in the same manner that it touches gold.
Cattails sway in the gentle afternoon breezes while waves splash and linger amongst the stone and sand.  In the distance , on the city side of the river, the old tenements and the older still, high school reach into the sky, grasping for their share of the guilding power of light.  I see it, I smell it and I feel it as I draw and paint from this muse.  Her power coaxing me throughout my life.  

Field of Grasses

Southern Tides II

There is history here. The river fed life to this region.  It provided food to the native peoples.  It provided a means of transportation to the early settlers.  Textile mills and shipping lines formed along the banks, and brought a brief time of extreme prosperity to some, and the means to a dreams becoming reality to so many others.  To me, it provides energy, clarification, solstice and opportunity.  It has become my own natural, life filled, light filled,

Yellow Fields

Monet like garden.  It only takes 1,000 steps or less, an awareness, an open eye, a state of mind, and my brushes.

Field of Blue and Gold

Each painting is inspired by a step along the way, something I have seen, processed and interpreted in my way.  It is a deeply personal expression that focuses on color and emotion, but relies on the viewer to complete.  

They are works of contemporary art that make a fine addition to any collection.  They are equally appropriate in a home, office or public space.

For more information on Archival Giclee prints of this collection and more please visit the Taylespun Studio on line shop.

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Public Spaces

On the easels, final touches.

The River Beyond

From January through August of 2015 I found myself working on a series of paintings about my home town of Fall River.  They are the precursors to the "Intersecting
Principles" series I am now creating.  (Some of the earlier drawings have been spoken about in previous blog posts.)

Fourth of July Holiday

I call this collection of paintings "Public Spaces."  They are inspired by my walks through the major public parks within the City of Fall River.  My intent was to express the hidden, often overlooked beauty of the city.  I did not create portraits of specific parks.  I worked to capture the feeling of a view, the movement of a hillside, or simply the color relationships between trees.  Efforts were made to translate the mood and essence that are fundamental to the splendor captured between the shadows and the sunlight.

A Parting of the Way

My hometown has been besieged with negative perspective and publicity.  Headlines shout about crime, drugs and corruption, but Fall River is so much more than that.  We are a community, complex and diverse.  We are authors, Artists, musicians and hard working tough minded, strong willed people.  Our public Spaces, North Park, Ruggles Park, and Kennedy (or South) Park have evolved as the city has evolved.  Those parks have been my motivation, my very muse for this collection of paintings and drawing.  Posted here is a selection of that work.


 

There is History There

Blue Pine and Shadow Play

Intersecting Principles: Walking on Water

     This drawing is the second in the "Intersecting Principles" series.  When I travel the city of Fall River, this area somehow feels like the roots of the city.  This is where the Taunton River meets what is left of the captured and piped in mouth of the Quequechan River.  Sure the shoreline is actually about seven mile long, but this is at the base of Downtown.  This is where the Fall River Line ships moored. The life blood of the city in the nineteenth century pulsed through this area like the true blood of a man's heart.  Native Americans crossed the river here.  King Phillip's warriors fought and lost battles with the British here.

     The story of Fall River starts here.

     Today, it is the Home of Battleship Cove, Heritage Park, the Fall River Carousel, (once the pride and joy of Lincoln Park). There is a large commercial pier, a railroad yard and a few working factories. There is also a Railroad Museum, a Marine Museum, few restaurants and and bars.  The Narrows Center for the Arts with two galleries a state of the art performance space and several artist studios sits three floors above it all.  All in all a very busy place, one that I stroll between brush strokes and contemplation.  

It seemed a fitting second step.  From here I can look up toward my city, look out across the river, or take in the living history that continues.  The sounds of the traffic crossing the big blue Braga bridge echo and give surreal din to the colliding diversity and shifting priorities of a struggling city. 

Walking on Water  /  14x20 graphite on paper

So, that said, if "Church Steeple" represents family values and the beginnings of a political viewpoint, "Walking on Water" represents the principles of work and play intersecting along the waterfront, the rail yards, and the public spaces filled with high hopes and grand intentions.

Intersecting Principles is a new series of work, funded in part by the Fall River Cultural Council, a subsidiary of the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

 

Intersecting Principles : Church Steeple

Intersecting Principles is a new series of work, funded in part by the Fall River Cultural Council a subsidiary of the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

     My purpose is to create a body of work to serve as a visual metaphor inspired by the conflicting perspectives or the intersections of moral and political principles of the diverse population of  my home town.  I hope the work inspires a discussion. Still, my intentions artistic intentions are about creating individual works of art that are engaging, inspirational, and even, maybe, pleasing to look at.

      This is an eight month long project that begins right here and now.  I will document and share my progress from this blog.

     I will first create fully rendered graphite drawings.  Each drawing will be 14x20 inches on off white Canson Edition paper, a heavy bodied paper often used for printmaking and multimedia art work.  From those drawings I will create 18x24 inches oil on canvas paintings.  This work is inspired by actual locations throughout the City of Fall River.  I have walked with my note book, sketch book and small camera, looking for interesting, (to me, at least) juxtapositions of color, light, and movement that occur at active city intersections.  I will create compositions that, while not recreating those intersections, are characterizations of those places that technically use the foundations of the abstract expressionist movement as the fundamental underlying structure to the work.

     All that said, they are simply paintings and drawings, and I hope there is some fun to be had.  I will display the entire series at my Narrows Center Studio/Gallery starting in September 2016. I will post and display each piece as they are completed.

     Let’s start here with “Church Steeple.” This is a simple straight forward expression, but it serves as a nice gateway for me.

Church Steeple

     Walking through the downtown area, passing the Church, I was reminded that many of our moral principles are born in our various religions.  With the intense back-lighting, and my dirty glasses, the building took on an ominous presence. That seemed a fitting place to begin. Our political views and our family values start during our earliest days as we gather with our families under the guidance of a religious leader in a gathering space that is solemn and often iconic so, I decided to start and end with this image. I wonder still how I will approach this one with color.

     I am inviting everyone to follow me along this path and see where we go.